Mashed Potatoes Recipes

I'm sure there is going to be at least one potato dish at your Thanksgiving table tomorrow evening. Our family loves potatoes and we're planning on splurging on many variations. There is a myriad of culinary possibilities for preparing the vegetables: roasted, boiled, steamed, baked, fried, or mashed.

Here are a few potato dishes that have been featured to date on PhamFatale.com. You can also find gourmet potato dishes in my first cookbook, Haute Potato, which is an ode to this root vegetable. In this book, I’ve included one of my favorites, which hails from India: a spicy potato cutlet stuffed with ground beef, or kheema. To illustrate the versatility of potatoes, the book is separated into chapters based on the primary flavor profile or texture of the dish. Each section is an exploration of the ways in which the potato can be used. So, though it may start its life in the ground, when combined with the right techniques and ingredients the potato can truly be haute cuisine. You can order it through Amazon or Barnes and Noble; it would also make a wonderful Christmas gift for the foodie in your life.

If you're planning a potato feast for Thanksgiving, I strongly suggest (shameless plug) that you try recipes from my first cookbook, Haute Potato. You'll find all sorts of dishes ranging from luxurious lobster chowder, delicious samosas to gourmet potato desserts. If you order it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble now, it should arrive before the holiday!

I prepared a pumpkinwith fresh chestnuts today for baby Aria and she absolutely loved it. The texture was a little too thick, so I thinned it with mashed plantains and a bit of milk. The pumpkin chestnut purée was as nutritious as it was delicious.

Who said "baby" food can't be tasty? I’ve made an effort to prepare homemade baby food ever since Aria started eating solids. She's already 16 months old and loves trying new foods. My motto is that I won’t serve anything to her that I wouldn’t eat myself. She seems to appreciate it and has become quite the little foodie! She even says “mmmmm” when we’re watching The Cooking Channel. Bobby Flay and the Iron Chef are her favorites!

Mashed potatoes are my guilty pleasure. For this version, green peas complement the flavor of this version and gives a beautiful color and wonderful texture to the purée.

My baby girl is already over 5 months old and I've started introducing solid food to her in the past 2 weeks. I've given her a diversity of vegetables already. Today, I tried feeding her legumes and made some baby food for her using peas. They're perfect because they're starchy and have a wonderful texture. I passed them through a large mesh sieve to remove the "skin" from the peas, which gave me the idea of making something similar for the family.

Mashed potatoes are my guilty pleasure. I've flavored them in the past with garlic, pesto, plaintains, olives and purple sweet potatoes, just to name a few. This time, I used broccoli. It complements the flavor and gives a beautiful color to the purée.

My favorite way to make this dish is to simply mash them using a potato masher, then add milk, cream and lots of butter. It might not be the healthiest approach, but it's certainly the most delicious for creamy mashed potatoes!